Before they were the saviors of the emo generation. Before the soldout stadiums, the eyeliner, the matching suits, the action figures, and their infamous disappearing act, they were just a group of guys from New Jersey trying to outrun their own demise. This is the story of a band that changed millions of lives, then almost lost their own in the process. This is the tragic history of My Chemical Romance right here on Common Revolt. Now would be a great time to hit that subscribe button. Just a warning, this video discusses sensitive topics including addiction, mental health struggles, self harm, and death. It includes references to substance abuse, emotional breakdowns, and the passing of former bandmate Bob Brier. Viewer discretion is advised. If you or someone else you know is struggling, please consider reaching out to a mental health professional or a support resource in your area. I'll be sure to include resources in the description below. This video aims to discuss these topics with care, honesty, and respect. This is the tragic history of My Chemical Romance. Gerard Weey didn't start out wanting to be a rock star. He was an introverted art school kid from New Jersey who just wanted to draw comic books. He battled depression and alcoholism in high school. He was bullied, isolated. He considered himself a loner. Music was never supposed to be the plan. But as most MCR fans know, all of that changed on September 11th, 2001. Gerard originally wanted to be a comic book artist, but found himself in New York working on a pitch for Cartoon Network for a show called The Breakfast Monkey. The show was never fully developed because network executives felt it was too similar to their already successful show Aquatine Hunger Force. He was getting close to reaching his breaking point, and it took watching the planes hit the towers on September 11th for him to realize he wanted to make music. Witnessing such a traumatic event firsthand caused him to re-evaluate his life, leading to the formation of Mind Chemical Romance. But as the band's fame grew, so did Gerard's personal struggles. He battled with alcoholism and drug addiction, which he later admitted were means to cope with his anxiety and depression. When My Chemical Romance recorded their debut album in 2002, Gerard Way was already deep in the throws of addiction. I Brought You My Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love wasn't just the band's first album. It was a cry for help disguised as a concept record, or at least what some fans believed to be a concept record, featuring a loose narrative with interconnected themes of depression, pessimism, anger, and disillusionment. The album was recorded in just under two weeks with Jeff Rickley, the frontman of the band, Thursday. The album was raw, abrasive, and quite unpolished, more or less a reflection of where Gerard's head was at the time. In a 2011 Karing magazine cover story, the band reflects on their early years, saying that as the band began touring, Gerard and Mikey began to drink. Alcohol was a coping tool. There were just so many hours to kill, and the music was so intense, it was about a lot of dark, [ __ ] up things, and I had to live through them every time we played. That's why I was drinking. Mikey added on to that statement made by Gerard, saying, "I missed home, and I was nervous to get on stage. It was a means to an end. I don't remember enjoying it." However, by November of 2003, things were looking good for MCR. The band signed a major label deal and had continued to build a growing fan base. Throughout the recording sessions for the band's album, Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge, which was released in 2004, tragedy struck the Way family as only a month earlier, their grandmother had passed away. The driving influence in steering them towards music in the first place. Gerard poured his feelings of grief into the album and particularly on the song Helena, a track that was not only named after her as a tribute, but acts as a letter to himself, processing the grief and the guilt he experienced wondering why he wasn't around for the last year of her life. Gerard had said in the past that all the [ __ ] anger, the spite, the beef with God, the angst, the aggression, and the venom, every emotion you go through when you're grieving, it's all on this album. He took those emotions and added them to a cocktail of alcohol, Xanax, pills, and cocaine. Gerard wasn't alone, as Frank had also admitted around that time to taking pills on a Friday night and waking up on Monday with no memory of the weekend. Gerard adding that some of the band members were experimenting with pills and they would all vanish for days when they weren't in the studio. In July of 2004, a month after the album was released, Gerard had a breakdown. And after a slew of shows in Japan and sake binges, Gerard passed out in a puddle of his own vomit. Guitarist Ray Toro was deeply concerned and implored Gerard to get help. It was at that moment he got sober after seeing a psychiatrist. And around the same time the band quietly fired their drummer, Matt Pelier, as they believed he was no longer the right fit, they hired Bob Ryer, and the band got serious and tore their asses off to promote this album they were so proud of. By the time they began recording what would become the Black Parade in April of 2006, all of that touring, all of that effort, all of the great songs they had made had turned MCR into a budding sensation. They felt an intense pressure to follow up Three Cheers with their next album, and recording it in a reportedly haunted mansion only added to the chaos. The Black Parade was a concept record about death, a rock opera, a funeral march, a farewell letter to their old selves, told from the perspective of a dying cancer patient. The band aimed to defy all the expectations of what they might do with their next record by doing the exact opposite. And behind the scenes, the members were still struggling. Basist Mikey Way quietly left the band midway through recording. The pressure of constant attention, alcohol use, and the weight of his own mental health struggles pushed him to the edge. While he checked into therapy to better himself, the band wasn't sure if he would ever come back. Frank was shutting down emotionally. Ry became obsessively perfectionist and Gerard spiraled into full creative obsession, becoming obsessed with death, going as far as to say he spent days watching Passion of the Christ with the sound off, saying, quote, "I couldn't get things grim enough." Gerard said he became so obsessed he even ended a relationship. His obsession and attention to detail within the band was taking a toll on his personal life. Ray Toro remarked that he learned so much of what not to do on the Black Parade. In relation to creating an album, saying, "You can be intense in such a way that you inspire people or you can do it in a way that you intimidate people. On Black Parade, I did it the wrong way." Basist Mikey Wei said while recording the Black Parade, everything came to a head for him. He was between the ages of 23 and 24 and drinking all the time and going away to fix himself was the only option. The band were prepared for everyone to hate the Black Parade due to the success of their previous album, waiting for it to be torn to pieces and that the band only noticed a shift in the album's perception a year after its release. They decided to keep going even though they were tired. They felt they owed it to the album. The overall Black Parade promotional cycle was riddled by illness, burnout, and injuries. And filming for the music video for the song Famous Last Words was so intense that drummer Bob Brier suffered severe burns and nearly died of an infection after his leg caught fire. While he was hospitalized for Gang Green, Gerard Wei also suffered injuries during the filming of the video after tearing all the ligaments in one of his feet. The Black Parade tour was as emotionally draining as creating the album. The band said they didn't argue much because they didn't really talk. The band was going through the motions and stuck in the machine that MCR had become. They started to forget they were people beyond all of this. When the touring cycle finally finished at Madison Square Garden in May of 2008, 19 months after the band first started touring for the album, they were ready to break up, saying that after the Black Parade, being in the band felt like work. While Frank decided to start a hardcore band called Leathermouth and tour with that project, the rest of the band opted to hibernate. Later on, Gerard became a dad and two weeks after that, the band went into the studio, recording an album that they would eventually scrap, to which Gerard believed that the album did not have that greatness of their previous music. Drummer Bob Brier was also asked to leave the band around that time, and it became clear that MCR had lost more than a drummer. They lost a creative pillar. Bob never joined another band. He largely disappeared from the public eye, only surfacing on social media from time to time, often with cryptic posts that reflected pain, detachment, and distance from the MCR world, selling all of his old drum kits and donating the money to pet charities. And in November of 2024, Bob was found dead in his home at the age of 44. His body was found in a state of advanced decomposition, which made it impossible to determine an exact cause of death. Based on reports, it was believed that Bob Brier was alone in the final days of his life. The autopsy report listed the death as undetermined, but noted the presence of three large nitrous oxide canisters and anti-depressants near his body, suggesting an accidental overdose. His final social media post dated on November 5th of 2024 paid tribute to Chester Bennington of Lincoln Park. In a statement released by the band, they said, "It is with a heavy heart that we say goodbye to Bob Brier, our former bandmate and an important part of the history of My Chemical Romance. We send our deepest condolences to his friends and family at this time. May he rest in peace." Frank Aayro released his own statement in regards to Bob's passing in which he described Brier as an enigma of sorts, often inhabiting both ends of any spectrum at the same time, reflecting on their time in the band together, their old friendship, and the fact that Bob had essentially became a stranger to him over the years. I've tried to keep this video in chronological order as far as the timeline of My Chemical Romance's release schedule as a band, but I felt it important to include the bit about Bob right here as it is part of his story. And I do think that My Chemical Romance is in a better spot aside from this, as far as I can tell, in regards to their mental and physical health while being on tour and performing in the limited amount of touring they have done since their return. And since there's no good way to transition back to the timeline I was already speaking on, that leads us to the Danger Days era. After the band scrapped an album that would later be released as conventional weapons during their time of inactivity, the band would return to the studio with Rob Kavalo, the producer that helped them create The Black Parade. this time for Danger Days, the true lives of the fabulous Killjoys. It was the album that was essentially never supposed to happen, and it's personally one of my favorite releases by the band, I think it gets overlooked a lot. And my hot take about Danger Days is that it might be my favorite MCR record. I go back and forth between this and The Black Parade, but that's besides the point. While The Black Parade was not definitively planned as the band's last album, Frontman Gerardway has stated that he felt like it was a natural ending to the band's conceptual narrative. Because before Bullets was ever released, he had mapped out the band's future. Three albums, each building on the last, the Black Parade was the third, the final act. They were supposed to ride off into the sunset after the touring cycle of Black Parade, but the band didn't stop. When speaking to Curang magazine in 2014, Gerard said, "I kept going against every fiber in my being. I kept going. I went against myself and I lost." The touring cycle for Danger Days had the band burnt out. The pressure to live up to his reputation had driven Gerard back to familiar problems. Depression, substance abuse, and issues with his body image, saying that he looked at pictures of himself and saw somebody that had relapsed into alcohol and was completely starving himself. And when fans wonder why MCR didn't hit the brakes sooner, you have to understand that it wasn't just a band anymore. It was a business, a crew, a family. Basically, an entire corporation of people that rely on MCR as their livelihood, not to mention all the fans that demanded more of the band. And while most fans were understanding when the band needed to take time away, that pressured sense of responsibility was a reason that they felt like they couldn't stop. They owed it to their audience, but I think they owed it to themselves to be healthy first. And during that touring cycle for Danger Days, their drummer at the time, Michael Pedicon, was caught stealing from MCR, saying he was caught red-handed. The band was heartbroken and sick to their stomachs over the entire situation, Frank said in a statement. Pedicon later admitted to the theft, claiming it was a lapse in judgment. But for the band, it was another betrayal during a fragile period. They replaced him with Jared Alexander, but that damage lingered and internally things weren't much better. They were fractured and tired. By 2012, when the band began working on new music, the spark was gone again. And without warning, in March of 2013, the band announced they were done. Gerarda released a solo album called Hesitant Alien in 2014. And when speaking to ENM about the record, he said he broke up the band to save himself. In a quote, he said, "I relapsed, not into drugs, but booze. I was self-medicating again to get through and I'd forgotten how miserable that made me. It took me to the dark place again, but there was more at stake this time. I started to face a hypothetical reality of my daughter not having a father. I started taking that seriously, thinking, I want her to have a dad, a guy that's present, because one way or another, either by death or by asylum, she's going to be fatherless if I keep this up." He said the choice was easy. Break the band or break me. During MCR's time of dormcancy, their legacy and their popularity only grew. Gerard launched the comic series, The Umbrella Academy, which spawned a Netflix series that was insanely successful. Mikey played in various bands, one of them being Electric Century. Ray released some solo work, but mostly stayed to himself. And Frank released a multitude of records under his own name and a nameshifting backing band called Frank Aayro and the Celebration, Frank Aayro and the Patients, and Frank Aayro and the Future Violence. The band took time away to heal and I think it helped them in the long run. And they've been on stage in the last few years saying that they're having fun for the first time together. When they announced the reunion show in 2019, it sold out instantly. They announced an entire reunion tour as well, playing some of the biggest venues of their career with the dates being pushed multiple years due to the co pandemic. My Chemical Romance has always been more than just a band. For a lot of their fans, they became a source of therapy, and that pressure only added to the reputation the band felt they had to uphold and the fan base they felt they needed to do right by. Millions of listeners worldwide have found solace in their music, knowing they weren't alone at their lowest, and I think that's a beautiful thing. But MCR's own journey was laced with burnouts, breakdowns, betrayals, addiction, loss, and grief. They gave us their blood, sweat, tears, and trauma. And somehow through it all, came back stronger and bigger than ever. It seems for the first time in a long time, maybe ever, the band is having fun together on stage, and I think that that's been a huge help in healing for them. I also think it makes sense why The Foundations of Decay, which was released as a surprise in 2022, has been the only bit of new music we've received from MCR since their reunion. I would rather them take their time and not rush things because we'll be here when the moment is right. And if that moment never comes, they obviously have a really great catalog for us to continue to listen to. Until then, go listen to Frank's new band, LS Dunes. Their new album came out in January of this year, and it rocks. I actually had the opportunity to speak with Frank just a few weeks ago for Common Revolt. Make sure you're subscribed to see that video when it drops. As far as MCR's future, they have a stadium tour planned for this summer called The Long Live the Black Parade Tour, playing the biggest headlining shows of their entire career. And in June, My Chemical Romance plans to reissue Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge, remixed and remastered. I've heard it and it sounds even more incredible than it already did. As always, thank you for watching. You could have been anywhere in the world and watching anything at all and you chose this video and for that I thank you. What band should I talk about next? Let me know in the comments below. My name is Tyler Common. This is Commer Revolt. We'll see you next